12x12
ink, acrylic on clayboard
The last time that I thought this work was finished was on Halloween of last year. Seems like yesterday to me, since it feels like I've been concerning myself with this piece up until last month. But this work needed some sophistication of color to help make it pop and I really didn't like how the black graphics just "sat there" on the surface of the picture, obscuring the eye's transition into color.
You, my audience, probably can't see any of the details in the spiraling helixes laid into the background (yes, they are there), camouflaged by the varied movements above them. But I went over them a second time with the same colors and filled in the white areas interspersing the pattern with a lemon yellow ink to help heighten the light of the piece. At that time, I thought, for only using the warmest colors, I really didn't have enough light shooting out from the square.
To vary it a bit, I applied some olive greens in specific locales on the picture to intersperse a subtle foreground/background tension amongst the yellow and give the central figure a bit more (keeping it subtle, now) depth.
I also did a little Ben-Day action on the edges of the black graphics to help them fade just a touch, like those Massimo t-shirts I used to wear in 6th grade.
Finally, I was needing a pinch of something to just give the eye a moment to forget about the yellow and I realized that hiding my tendrils so delicately was not helping me make this picture pop... and their wispiness asked a bit more energy out of the viewer than I really thought was appropriate, so I took some quinacridone red and highlighted the tips like a scorpion (do scorpions have red stingers).
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